one question
Tina Rosenberg
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and co-founder, Solutions Journalism Network
Tina Rosenberg
Yes—but not in the way many journalists fear and many civilians hope.
We tend to define news as “what’s wrong.” But for every shared problem, lots of people are trying to solve it, and some of those responses are worth knowing about.
We should report on those responses: What are people doing? What evidence is there of success? What’s not working about the response?
This isn’t celebrating solutions or advocating for them. It’s just reporting on them.
Reporting on solutions actually makes watchdog journalism stronger. One example: The Plain Dealer [of Cleveland] had done lots of coverage about the problem of lead paint poisoning of the city’s children. None of it had led to action—city officials simply responded with the usual: This is a terrible problem and we’re doing the best we can.
What finally sparked action was reporting on what Cleveland’s neighbors around the Midwest and beyond were doing that was more successful. Learning that Rochester, Grand Rapids, Akron, and other cities were doing far better than Cleveland took away the excuses of city officials, and led to major change, culminating in a historic new lead poisoning law the city council passed in July, which adopted many of the best practices of Cleveland’s neighbors.
Kyle Pope
Editor-in-chief and publisher, Columbia Journalism Review
Kyle Pope
Not only should journalism offer solutions, it must. We, as journalists exploring problems in great detail, in some cases know more about them than the policymakers and others who are trying to find answers.
We owe it to our readers, and to the society in which we live, to try and put that knowledge to use. And it’s not that hard: The solutions stem from the reporting.
We are living in a moment when some news organizations still equate aggressive, solutions-based reporting with activism. We see it most acutely in coverage of the climate crisis. But highlighting a problem, and putting forward ways to make it better, are in the very best tradition of journalism itself. We saw it in the coverage of the civil rights movement, Vietnam, and Watergate.
Today, all of those are regarded as examples of reporting at the highest level. We are living at a time when journalism is under attack and its potential is met with fear. Reporters need not fear their own craft. We have a proud legacy of highlighting wrongs in the world and pointing to ways of fixing them. Now, more than ever, we need to embrace that legacy.